


Statement of Elias Bouchard, regarding his first encounter with the entity known as the Beholding

by Unicorn (Jensee)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Anal Sex, Canon-Typical Behavior, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Elias is a creep in every sense of the world, Erotic standoff could be another name for this, Exhibitionism, Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, Sexual Harassment, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 19:08:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18708166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jensee/pseuds/Unicorn
Summary: The surrounding sounds of the inmates and their families fell away around them, until Jon could only hear Elias, only know him, until he couldn't tell if Elias was speaking to him still or if his thoughts were simply directly spilled into his brain.





	Statement of Elias Bouchard, regarding his first encounter with the entity known as the Beholding

**Author's Note:**

> This is for a birthday, for Juice's birthday, and it's... a few months late, and of course it ended up being much longer than expected, but what can you do...
> 
> Thanks go to Nelja, for helping me figure out how this would end! I think I would just have kept panicking were it not for her <3
> 
> Anyway it's there! Please do mind the tags, this is not pretty. 
> 
> Other than that... I don't have much else to say,  
> Enjoy!

"Hi Jon."

"Elias"

He could feel the recording tape turning and wiring in the interior pocket of his jacket. The guards at the entrance of the prison had confiscated the two that had materialized in his bag during the trip here, but Jon couldn't pretend he was surprised at the apparition. The Archivist didn't care about such things as human limitations.  
He wouldn't want to admit it out loud, but it was even somewhat reassuring by now, to know that he was watched over, that he was _Known_ whenever he went. He wasn't sure that was a good sign.

"I see you've - ah - recovered."

Elias didn't sound any different than Jon remembered, but he didn't look good, which, maybe, wasn't entirely surprising. He was pale - paler than usual - and he seemed to have lost weight during his stay in the prison. He also seemed bruised, tired, purple marks ornating his wrists and circling his intent, shining eyes. Jon wondered, if his body wasted away, what would remain of Elias Bouchard? Would he become a husk of a human being, shrivel and die? Or would he turn into a parody, something human only in name, with the only thing still alive in him his unwavering, forever watching eyes? It didn't seem like such an unlikely possibility.

"I have. Thank you. Are you... okay?"

Elias raised an eyebrow, still imperious despite everything.

"I would love to have a nice little chat with you about my incarceration and my charming fellow inmates Jon, but I don't think that's why you're here. And we do have a limited amount of time."

"Right." Jon had mulled over what he wanted to say, what he wanted to ask Elias once he'd have a chance to, unsure and anxious. But now that he was in front of him, his mind was clear of any doubt, and he knew exactly where to start. He worried his dry lips with his teeth, and piercing eyes followed the movement like a shark sensing fresh blood. "Statement of Elias Bouchard, concerning..."

"...his relationship with the entity known as the Eye." Elias finished for him in a hoarse whisper, his breath shaky and ever so slightly out worldly as he exhaled.

The surrounding sounds of the inmates and their families fell away around them, until Jon could only hear Elias, only know him, until he couldn't tell if Elias was speaking to him still or if his thoughts were simply directly spilled into his brain.

"As you may know," began Elias, "I was a rather... negligent student. Not a _bad_ one, per see. I was smart enough to get by in most subjects, but I did tend to think the constraints of academia were somewhat… beneath me. You see, I had other occupations."

His eyes were boring holes into Jon's, the sound of his voice burrowing inside him, echoing in the void left by the fiery need for knowledge.

"I smoked marijuana, and spent hours participating in boring book clubs, revealing in the superiority of my intelligence compared to all those pathetic, insignificant others that had no problem diving head first into conventional, narrow lives. I had a boyfriend as well, although I think calling him that might be a bit of a stretch.

His name was Amir and he was mostly irrelevant but he wasn't clingy, he always had weed he was willing to share, and he liked fucking. Which would have been perfectly mundane and inconsequential, if it hadn’t been the occasion for me to encounter the Beholding.”

Elias's eyes bore right into Jon, his voice echoing through the Archivist's brain, as if his words were passing through his own mouth; and he could feel the bitter taste of smoke on his lips and the boring tap-tap of his fingers against wood as he listened to some twenty somethings drone on and on and on about their communist interpretation of Pride and Prejudice.  
"Amir had... preferences when it came to sex. I didn't care either way, so when he decided to start experimenting, I didn't stop him.  
He started with little things. His door would be unlocked when we were in his dorm room, then slightly open... it was a bit annoying but ultimately he did enjoy himself more, which led to me enjoying myself just as much, so it hardly mattered."

Jon wondered if Elias enjoyed this; enjoyed the fact that he could feel the statement as if he'd been the one making it. The fact that he was all at once Jon - sat down on one side of a cold prison table - the Archivist - feeding on the words, sustaining itself on both of their latent fear - and a younger Elias, hiding his moans under a bored expression as his boyfriend drove into him; shaking slightly as his eyes went back and forth between Elias and the opened door.  
"Even then, it wasn't hard to tell Amir was just as frightened by the exhibitionism as he was aroused by it, but I put up with it for a while. The more we did it, the more obsessed he became, and after a while he would want to have sex almost every time it seemed we might get caught. To be perfectly honest, it was beginning to annoy me, and I was getting ready to break it off." The Archivist under Jon's skin reared up at the slight pause there, sensing that Elias was about to get in the thick of things maybe. "Then something changed. At the time, I didn't really know what but I have since had the occasion to reflect on it quite a lot and I now know this is when I met the Beholding for the first time.  
We were in the library. Amir was a history student and he still had to at least try to study. I, on the other hand, didn’t have much to do, and usually read philosophy books I thought no one else would understand. Watching him, I could see he was getting bored and restless, and the aisle we were in was almost deserted. It wasn’t hard to guess where this would eventually end up.  
Sure enough, after half an hour, I could see his eyes start to gauge the situation around us. They settled on a particularly dark corner, where a shelf full of dusty, old and undisturbed books obscured most of the view."

Elias's eyes didn't waver from Jon as the statement resonated through the both of them. He felt along as Amir slowly coaxed his annoyed boyfriend towards the library, lips warm and hungry but hands shaking; as he whispered orders into Elias's ears: to stay quiet, silent, discreet. As he worked him open, his fingers opening his body up in practiced motions. Jon felt Amir sank into him, his cock hard and hot inside of Elias, his rhythm erratic as he tried to stay alert, murmuring dirty suggestion to his boyfriend, who only cared about the solid weight against his back and the dick he was refraining from moaning around.

"The shelf he'd pushed me against was see-through and I could watch the rest of the library: see and be seen by anyone walking close to where we were hidden. There weren't that many books back there: my vision was almost entirely clear. One of the books stood out though. It seemed normal from the outside, but when I wasn't looking directly at it, it looked as though there were shapes swirling on its cover, opening and closing like the slow blink of an eye. Of course, whenever I looked again, the book was back to being perfectly mundane. And compared to the ones it was leaning against, it seemed… more real somehow.

Amir went suddenly very quiet behind me, although he didn't stop fucking me. We were both very silent, listening for any footstep. We couldn't see anyone but it felt like someone - _something_ \- was there, watching us.

But I had been on the lookout and I _knew_ no one was even near our section. Yet I kept scanning the library with baited breaths as Amir fucked me.  I knew... I _knew_ no one else was there, and that, somehow, it was that book: that book was watching me. Watching us."

Jon felt as Amir's thrusts sped up, his breath hot and humid against his neck, heard his quiet moans as Elias watched on, brilliant eyes unwavering from the small black book that - without eyes - watched him back. He could feel every little shift of skin, every plane of hard wood against his palms and his knees, feel the hot hard length of the other boy press deep inside of him, making him arch against the wooden shelf, close his eyes; the feeling of being watched intensifying on and on and on until-

Elias let out a silent whimper as he came, shivering around Amir who let out a quiet swear before reaching his climax moments later.

Elias could barely pay attention to it as another sound clattered, it seemed, right into his brain. The book had fallen from the shelf, and laid, open, on the floor.  
All of its pages were blank.

"Shit." Amir gave Elias's temple a perfunctory kiss before pulling out of him, making them both wince slightly. The movement momentarily distracted Elias from the book and it receded at the edge of his vision, still burning a hole in his mind as it laid, blurred, just at the periphery of his perception.

Amir wiped his sweaty hands on his jean before reaching down to pick up the book.  
As soon as his hand touched it, his expression changed, his momentum flattering. He looked around, glassy eyes passing right over Elias.

"Hello? Is someone there?"

The silence stretched several for long minutes, and Elias did nothing as an expression of dread settled on his boyfriend's face.

Amir, slowly, as if he was trapped in heavy waters, finally finished the movement and put the book back on the shelf, almost dropping it again in his haste to get rid of it.

"Come on, let's get out of here."

Jon swallowed around the taste of lips that had never touched his. Elias's eyes were burning with some kind of expecting hunger, and Jon knew the statement was nourishing him as much as it did him. It felt like Elias was hungry for him specifically, like his fervor for the beholding - that lit a fire in his eyes and made the grip he'd found on Jon's hand shiver slightly - was a vessel for something else, something more human maybe, and Elias's parted lips were impossibly bitten and red, as they had been for Amir.

The silence stretched for several seconds and Jon could feel the tension of a body that was not his, battered and satisfied with the proof of sex settled deep inside of him. Elias licked his lips one more time before picking his story up, with a rough, fucked out voice.

"Amir changed a bit after that. Quite unsurprisingly, he failed his exams, but as far as I know, it wasn't because he didn't have the answers, but rather because he'd become so convinced someone was following him that he had left halfway through most of them. He kept repeating that someone was watching him, he was sure of it, and he smoked pot constantly to try and calm his nerves. He would even try to make me admit I was the one following him around. To be quite frank, from a boyfriend material point of view, he'd become rather boring. He was never in the mood for sex and would always stop in the middle of it because he was sure someone, or something, was watching us."

That hadn't stopped Elias, and Jon was hit with images of him climbing on top of a mostly unresponsive young man, making him suck him off as he stared into the distance or sinking on his dick while Amir whimpered feebly in a mix of pleasure and fear. "But I found myself fascinated with him in a way I had never experienced before.  
He was constantly afraid, constantly looking behind his shoulder, and knowing his fear had become much more interesting to me than my former futile proofs of superiority." - Elias licked his lips like an hungry cat poised to pounce on a prey - "He had a shiver on his skin, a constant cold sweat running down his spine, and his muscles would be corded and tense from constantly trying to shield himself from an unseen, all seeing eye. He began having nightmares as well - not like yours - nightmares where the eyes would follow him, pursue him in his dreams until they were so akin to reality sleep made no difference to him.

I listened to him mutter in his sleep, watched him as he trembled through the night. I was probably already in his nightmares at this point, part of the ceaseless eyes that kept their watch on him even as he slept. He was scared but he clung to me: I was the last reasonable explanation for his paranoia and getting rid of me would have forced him to admit _I_ wasn't the only source of his fear, that maybe there really was something after him.

I was having dreams of my own, about the _book_." Moving slowly, like in water but towards an inescapable goal, resting inconspicuously on a library shelf.

"I would be in the library, reading it." Watching and being watched: a feeling of dread reaching such a state that it stopped meaning anything. "It was still blank, but I could read the lives of every person I knew, of everyone, I would read and watch them as they went on to their insignificant little lives, and I would witness their nightmare as they felt the weight of my stare upon their boring routine."

Pages turning slowly, echoing back fear, until there were only a few left... five, then three, then two, then…

"I always woke up before finishing the book, never looking at the last page. Then I would watch Amir dream until he woke up in a cold sweat." Looking up at his boyfriend and always hoping not to find him watching, watching, _watching_.

But Elias always was.

"I think you can guess what happens next, Jon. You have read enough statements for that by now, haven't you?"

They stared at each other, both fully conscious that the statement wasn't over.

"I went back to the library. I waited until night, while Amir was sleeping, and I broke into the building.  
The lock on it wasn't even that hard to open, and I don't remember making any real effort, even though I'd never picked a lock before. I walked towards it, like I had, so many times in my dreams.  
I remember thinking maybe it was just another one, another dream, maybe I wasn't really there; maybe I even wished not to be.

When I got to it, the book was open. It was _waiting_ for me. Its pages were as blank as they ever had been and it _demanded_ my story.

I didn’t resist. I told it everything I was. I didn't have to think about a narrative or even about making a statement: the words went freely and invitingly out on that book, and I could feel myself being written inside out, until nothing of me was left unknown to our god." Jon shivered at the words, and Elias's grip on him tightened. Through the statement, he could feel the All-seeing Eye of the Beholding marking his very being completely, leaving no part of him private; covered by the very human standards of privacy, of boundaries.  
"The words printed themselves on the book as they left me but the pages drank them as they did, and I knew then I was nothing without its watchful glance."

The Archivist breathed in as Elias exhaled slowly, reclining back in the metal chair, and finally released Jon's hand. It burnt cold, and he snatched it back before it could reach out for Elias's inhuman warmth again.

"Did you know, Jon? A human life is incredibly empty.  
It didn't take more than an hour for the book to read me whole. Then it sat, open and completely blank in front of me, only the last page left to turn. I didn't know if it would sign my end or my salvation, but I knew by then my life as it had been was already forfeited.

I turned it."

Jon lost his breath in a rush as he felt Elias being rewritten, inside out, becoming something more than himself, as if not only another eye, but a thousand of them were opened, his vision suddenly extending in planes unknown to regular human eyes. Jon himself could barely comprehend it, but the Archivist purred in his mind like a satisfied cat, extending phantom limbs along his flesh, settling itself deeper still in him, so entangled Jon knew he wouldn't be able to extricate it if he tried. He wasn't sure he wanted to anymore.

"Amir was calmer after that. He didn't know how, or why, but the attention the eye had given him seemed to have lessened. He thought he’d managed to escape it somehow."

He hadn't. It was in Elias's feline eyes, in his languid expression, in the tip of his finger slowly drawing mindless shapes into the air. Above it all, it was a certainty settling in Jon's mind, the cold knowledge that Amir's mind has been rewritten in the Beholding, archived as his fragile, human shell was surrendered to shiver and shrivel until it was reduced to nothing.

"I took him to dinner. It was a nice night, and I could tell Amir was surprised but happy. It felt like the end of the road for him. I was sweet and nice, savoring the evening and his dissipating feeling of dread." - Elias leaned in and Jon could suddenly feel the warmth of his breath on his lips - "Then I brought him to his dormroom and I fucked him exactly the way he liked it. I made him moan and _beg_ for me." His eyes burned Jon's vision as he poured sensations and knowledge directly in his brain: The feeling of flesh against flesh, the warmth of another body below him and around him; the memory of moans and bitten-off curses. "And right as he was about to come, I began to tell him every little thing about his life, every single detail, every piece of knowledge and memory I could pry from his mind." Jon could see it; remember it. Amir: about ready to burst open and suddenly Elias's voice right into his ear, right into his head, detailing all his secrets, everything about himself he'd thought private and hidden, buried, forgotten, thrown out in the open for everyone to see, to watch, to _know_. He could feel as terror mixed with pleasure when Amir came, his whimper tasting of fear Could feel as Elias went on, his hard, hot flesh forgotten where it joined him with his victim while he revealed in another kind of extasy.

When he finally came in Amir's hole, the boy was a mess of tear and come, his misfired nerve messages, sparks of fear and pleasure transpiring in his sweat. He stared hollowly at Elias, a mix of betrayal and absolute, complete dread on his face. Elias responded with a kiss, sweet, almost loving where it covered his sharp predatory teeth, and wrapped himself around him, savoring the dizzying pit of panic opening like a gaping maw in Amir's mind.

Jon wanted to be horrified, to ask Elias to stop, to stop torturing that boy, to stop narrating it.  
He didn't. He just witnessed, stored the information, fed the Eye the knowledge and the fear, pinned in place by the wistful expression on Elias's face and every little bit of sensations, memory and fear being poured into him.

"Amir was..." - Elias passed strong, slender fingers over his lips and Jon imagined him licking them, as if he'd just finished a meal - " _out of sorts_ after that. He was afraid of me, naturally, but he also feared leaving me. I wouldn't have harmed him, of course - not the way he was thinking - but I didn't stop watching him and it only made his fear more delicious."

Elias's eyes were burning holes and Jon couldn't stop watching, feeding on his words, his memories. He couldn't help but feel as if he'd become the book on which Elias was languidly writing himself in, a simple, direct link between him and their god, a hot wire feeling every sparks of energy Elias’s statement - Elias’s _actions_ \- was producing.

"He kept studying for a bit, although he was failing all of his classes. I stopped going altogether. I read and read and read, trying to appease my thirst for knowledge and fear, but it made a poor substitute, and I figured Amir wouldn't last forever. That is when I found the institute.  
Or, well, it would be maybe cliché to say it found _me_ , but it wouldn't be entirely wrong either."

Elias took a breath, his gaze getting unfocused as if he was reminiscing, feeling the knowledge push trying to force entry in his mind as he crossed the threshold of the institute.

“I didn’t bother making a statement then. My meeting with the Beholding was my own and I had already shared enough with the Eye for it to _own_ me in a way simple _words_ wouldn’t have been enough to accomplish. I could feel it, whenever I went, weighting on me, and the knowledge it allowed me to access in exchange made it easy to get into the Archives. Soon I spent most of my time there.  
I didn’t have to keep too close a leash on Amir. He knew I was watching him. Of course, he didn’t know _how_ I knew where he was at all time, but it couldn’t escape him, this _knowledge_ , that, no matter what he did, I would always be there, knowing him much more than he was willing to let me.

All things considered, he held up longer than most, I think. He tried to tell himself I knew him out of love rather than to feed on him. He couldn’t escape the knowledge that it wasn’t true, of course, but he still made a valiant effort.  
Not that it saved him in the end.

I knew he’d snap before he truly realized it himself. He tried to antagonize some thugs around the campus, hoping they’d kill him, and knowing they wouldn’t. They did manage to put him in the hospital though. He hoped I wouldn’t be able to visit but of course no one refused I _see_ him. Even then, I had some measure of control over the power the Eye had given me, and the nurses had the instinct not to… upset me.

He faded quickly after that. Once out of the hospital, he became reckless. He wasn’t enough of a courageous or cowardly man to outright commit suicide, but he did pump himself full of drugs, forcing on the dosage even though it made him even _more_ paranoid. He was becoming so incoherent at some point that even the Spiral made a pass at him, but I put an end to it quickly. He was, after all, mine.”

Elias said the word with a quiet, calm tranquility, but Jon felt it resonate deep within him, a sick sort of feeling, entrapping him and tethering him to the Beholding, to Elias. He could feel a link, something that found its way back to Elias, back to their god, like an icy feeling, a fear that encompassed a whole being, a whole mind, until it was its only feeling, its only emotion. Until nothing could exist outside of this fear. And suddenly Jon knew, he _knew_ with a startling, horrifying clarity what had become of Amir. And still, he could only behold it, archive it for the being that laid deep within him, a festering ball of fear made sentient.

“His decent into addiction – despite the fact that the drugs did nothing for him after a point – was extremely fast. I think it took him less than a month to be entirely dependent, and he spent most of his days in a stupor, that made it quite easy to just lead him around. It didn’t matter at that point that I was the very thing he was afraid of. I was his only beacon, his only hope, and the only thing he could still cling to in his desperation. Ironic, isn’t it?”

It was. A deep, twisted irony that tasted like eyes opening as he passed them, like the mechanical whirs of tape recorders coming to life, like the measured tone of a reader in a watchful library. Jon could even feel Amir now, taste his fear on his tongue; with some senses senses he still couldn’t quite identify.

“He Oded,” simply said Elias, and Jon could _see_ the sudden, violent tremors of hands, could hear hacking breaths, getting shorter and shorter, until they stopped altogether in panicked, cut-off whines. “he didn’t die of it, although that was probably the point, and they managed to get him out of his coma after a relatively short week. But he was… diminished, after that.” Wide, empty eyes that only tracked Elias’s movements, with a deep-seated, imprinted look of horror.

“He’s your battery.” Murmured Jon, horrified, the words almost escaping him. “Your food tank of fear.”

Elias hummed pleasantly, looking for all the world like a dignified gentleman hosting a conversation rather a gaunt prisoner with pale skin and shackles.

“I suppose you could call him that. I still go visit him sometimes.”

Jon could feel it fully now, a shivering husk of a man, only conscious enough of himself to know that he was watched, watched, watched, in a ceaseless, endless nightmare. Amir couldn’t escape, couldn’t scream out his fear and terror, could only shiver and whimper as he was cared for, as he was kept alive despite all his efforts. He’d tried to end it, Jon could see, to shut the eyes of other around him, or to make sure he’d never be able to feel them on him again. That had only allowed for his movements to be more restrained, for him to be watched more incessantly. He wasn’t an avatar, wasn’t enough of a person to be anything but a prey, living in a constant, paralyzing fear of being seen.  
Even the awareness of him felt like it was feeding Jon, erasing his sleepless nights, and taming his hunger after having skipped one too many meal.

“Are you ever going to let him die?”

“How do you suppose I should do that, Jon? I’m already in prison for murder, or should I remind you? Now, if you’ll let me finish…”

There were still words behind Elias’s lips, Jon realized, words that burned the back of his throat, only waiting to be freed and sacrificed to the Beholding, to Jon, to both their god. He only nodded, and watched as Elias’s mouth opened again, his throat working around the last sentences of his statement.

“Gertrude was fairly quick to find me. The Eye already liked me, I believe, so I got to escape her notice for a few weeks, but, despite her… failings, she was always a good Archivist, and a clever one at that, so she didn’t need much of the Eye to figure out I was browsing the Archives’ shelves. I think she would have tried to kill me, hadn’t she been able to tell immediately what I was, what I didn’t quite understand myself at the time. She saw right through me - a rather unpleasant experience coming from her, I do have to say – and immediately offered me a job as an archival assistant. Then, it was only a matter of doing the work. I was already favored by the Eye, and it could See I was devoted to making it grander through the more… basic work it needed. When the former Head of the Institute met a… tragic fate, it was clear even to Gertrude I was favored enough to take his place.”

Elias closed his mouth, the pressure at the back of his throat disappearing. He had been the one to feed Jon, maybe, but the glint in his eyes seemed hungry, ravenous, as if what he’d given away had been just as nourishing to him as it had been for Jon, and he wanted more of it. Jon could still feel the phantom fingers on his skin, pressing invisible indentation in his flesh, and he forced his mind to disentangle itself from Elias’s, finally pushing the words out:

“Statement ends.”

The pressure on his skin retreated and Jon huffed a breath, halfway relieved, halfway accusing the slight pain at breaking the mind meld with Elias. More than ever, his boss looked like his eyes were seeing right through Jon, and he forced himself not to wonder what he was seeing in him, least the Beholding was kind enough to offer him the information.

“Was it everything you wanted?” Elias broke the icy silence between them, making Jon feel as if his ears had just popped. The sound of the surrounding prisoners and families came back full force, a loud whisper of voices melted into one another. If he tried to concentrate, Jon knew he could separate each and every conversation and follow them all, but this was a fairly mundane prison, and he didn’t feel any urge to. “Or did you hope to uncover some kind of secret to coming more fully into your powers?”

 _I discovered more than I wanted to know_ wanted to say Jon, but that would have been a lie.

“You’re a monster,” is what he finally settled on. Elias barely snorted, and even he had to admit to the ridiculousness of the statement.

“Were you here for any reason at all, Jon? Or merely to catch up? At this point I hardly think you’d hope I would _feed_ you any more than what is strictly necessary. You know how I feel about your need to learn by yourself.”

Jon squinted at him, annoyed.

“I do know.”

“Then, _why_?

Why are you _really_ here, Jon? I don’t think you’re that interested in my well-being in those… rather solid walls, and while I do appreciate you taking the time to offer me some taste of you-“ that much innuendo really wasn’t necessary – “I doubt you only came here because you were preoccupied in my potential perishing from the Eye neglecting me.”

There was no compulsion in Elias’s words, and yet Jon could feel the answer bubbling out of him. He hadn’t known why he was there, why he was coming to see his smug, insufferable boss, but Elias’s question made the answer stumble out.

“Am I going to become like you?”

Elias smiled, and through him Jon could feel an intense, petty satisfaction, like a content cat happy it had outsmarted its prey.

“So this is what this is about.”

Elias sat up, leaning towards Jon once more. While the sounds around them didn’t disappear again, he was back to being Jon’s sole point of focus. Not close enough for him to feel breath on his skin, and yet every hair of his body stood on end, aware in a that unnatural way of their proximity.

“Are you worried you’ll become just like me: a… monster, was it? Do you really think humanity would spare you from monstrosity, Jon?”

“I-“Jon gave in the urge to lick his dry lips, and could feel Elias’ notice even as his eyes didn’t budge, rooting deep in his own.

“Did you really come all this way to ask me a question you already know the answer to? Or maybe it is that you missed me that much?”

Elias’s smile was a crooked, self-satisfied, smug smirk, and Jon was tempted to find a way to break it, but he knew, with an entirely human certainty, that simply punching him wouldn’t do the trick.

“I’m not like you,” he spat, trying to disentangle himself from Elias’s stare, from his strangely shaped pupils, from his complete, inescapable _knowledge_ of the man’s whole body angled towards him. “I wouldn’t do any of what you did to him. What you did to that boy was sick.”

“You’re not like me” parroted Elias, his voice velvet and easy. “But you have no more stake at humanity than I do. It doesn’t matter, Jon, that you don’t want to be a _monster_ , as long you’re with the Eye.” His words echoed in Jon’s voice once again, his voice carried like a loud whisper directly in his ears. “Maybe you _won’t_ become like me. It doesn’t change the fact that you can’t come back to who you were. Whatever _that_ was. But you knew that.” Elias’s eyes didn’t budge, but Jon could feel his stare over his scars, healing over too quickly, his skin too smooth where he’d been cut, punched, burned. “If all you want is to be reassured, there’s nothing I will do for you.”

His eyes were still embedded deep into Jon’s, unwavering, with a hint of that smug superiority that dripped from every word.

“This was useless.”

Jon abruptly stood up, breaking the standoff between himself and Elias. The man didn’t seem thrown at all by the sudden movement, simply reclining back into his chair, his eyes easily following Jon as he angrily closed his bag.

“I did appreciate the visit, Jon. It’s disappointing we had to cut it short, really.” Jon could feel the implication, the invasion of phantom hands in his skin, Elias’ humanity and possessively entangling themselves with his link with the Archivist. “Do give my regards to Peter and Martin, won’t you? And I’ll… _see_ you soon, as it were.”

Jon didn’t bother responding, already leaving the room, just as the guard signaled the end of the visit.

This had been all for nothing. No matter what Jon had excepted from Elias - and even now he wasn’t sure: a reassurance? The confirmation that he’d become something else than human, just like the Head of the Institute – the visit hadn’t had any satisfying result. Elias’s touch, their shared knowledge felt like it was still squirming all over his body, the memory of a youth he hadn’t lived traveling over his skin like the soft breath of a mouth browsing his body.

Only when he finally relented and jerked off in his shower did the pressure of Elias’s presence fade, with the left-over feeling of his smug satisfaction, a possessive touch Jon could feel over him, and the echo of a word, made all the more forceful by the casual tone it’d been carried with.

 _Mine_.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey you made it! o/
> 
> Please be sure to tell me what you thought! I'm not especially satisfied with the end cause my idea for this was mostly centred around the concept of Jon feeling the memories through Elias, and Elias's past so the rest is a bit... hazy at best.
> 
> And also, if you think more tags are needed when it comes to warnings, please do tell me. I tried to be thorough, but it wouldn't be the first time I forget something important.


End file.
